This presents about the role and use of GIS & Remote Sensing in forest mapping.

1. Kamlesh Kumar

2. • Forests have important and vital global ecological as well as socio-economic resources and they
require a sustainable management. An attempt has been made in this research to monitor,
record data as well as to have a systematic understanding of the forest map development and
to map the existing forest coverage in context of cost effectiveness and time consumption.
• Forest management requires reliable inventory data and the maps indicating current state of
the forest area.
• The problems involved in maintaining a sustained supply of forest resources for the present day
needs and future demands of the mankind have made the forest managers conscious about the
compelling need for rational utilization of these resources.
• The conventional methods of forest resources assessment and monitoring are time and cost-
intensive. Many a time they do not match with the resource dynamism and hence, become
obsolete by the time the results are available.
• The advent of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS), and global positioning
system (GPS) technologies has revolutionized the forest resources assessment, monitoring,
management and has reduced the time and cost considerably.
FOREST MAPPING

3. The evolution of GIS, the Global Positioning System (GPS), and Remote Sensing (RS)
technologies has enabled the collection and analysis of field data in ways that were not possible
before the arrival of computers. GIS has proven to play a vital role in the following
• Resource Management
• Harvest planning
• Fire Management
• Map production
• GIS for strategic planning and modeling

4. It is supported by the intensive use of geo-information technologies of (i) Remote Sensing (RS),
for its capability to collect accurate information over extensive areas at a repetitive basis, and
(ii) Geographic Information
Systems (GIS) for spatial analysis, statistics and mapping

5. Uses of GIS in forest management
GIS is a good tool for forest management
because it answers the following question that
helps in forest management activities:
• Location:What is at?
Location of forest resources in the earth in
many ways such as a place name, post or zip
code, or geographic references such as latitude
and longitude.
• Condition: Where is it?
Non forested land of certain size distance from
road or river.
•Trends:What has changed since?
It helps to find out what has changed
within study forest or land use an area
over time
• Patterns: What spatial patterns exist?
Determine whether landslide in forest
area
• Modeling:What if?
Determine what happens, if a road
network is added in a forest.

6. The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) has flooded almost every field in the engineering, natural and
social sciences, offering accurate, efficient, reproducible methods for collecting, viewing and analysing spatial
data. GIS and related technologies provide foresters with powerful tools for record keeping, analysis and decision
making. GIS can be established to provide crucial information about resources and can make planning and
management of resources easier, for example, recording and updating resource inventories, harvest estimation and
planning, ecosystem management, and landscape and habitat planning.
Basic functions of GIS:
• Data acquisition and pre-processing
• Database Management and retrieval
• Spatial measurement and analysis
• Graphic output and visualization
GIS application in forest management
Forest management planning involves making predictions about what the future forest will look like relative
to alternative management activities.This ability is crucial to nearly all aspects of management forecasting,
particularly long term wood and wildlife supply. GIS stores both the geographic and numerical structure of
the forest stands and links that spatial database to the planning models. It allows the manager to effectively
add both the important temporal and spatial dimensions to the management planning process.Within the
limits of the inventory and model, the manager can then map what the forest will look like in 5,10, 25, or 100
years in the future.

8. • Remote sensing is the science and art of obtaining
information about an object, area or phenomenon
through analysis of data acquired by the device that
is not in contact with the object, area or
phenomenon under investigation
• It is also said to be the practice of deriving
information about the earth’s land and water
surfaces using images acquired from an overhead
perspective, using electromagnetic radiation in one
or more regions of the electromagnetic spectrum,
reflected or emitted from the earth’s surface.
• Some of the highlights of the remote sensing
technology are stable sensing platforms, synoptic
coverage, high frequency of observations, and real-
time images available in spatial form and on
multiple scales. It is perhaps the only technology,
which allows retrospective evaluation of forest
resources.
RENOTE SENSING

9. Space-based earth observation technology
applicable to forest inventory and monitoring is
fairly well known:
• The Landsat Multispectral Scanner (MSS),
Thematic Mapper (TM), the SPOT Multispectral
and Panchromatic instruments, the Japanese
Marine Observation Satellite and the United
States National and Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration'sAdvancedVery High
Resolution Radiometer (NOAA-AVHRR)
sensors virtually form a complete list of
operational earth observation instruments.
• The SyntheticAperture Radar of the ERS- 1
satellite has recently been added to the
panoply, although its application to vegetation
studies is still at a development stage.
Extensive literature on the use of satellites for
forest surveys exists.

10. • The beginning of space-based remote sensing dates back to 1891, when Germans
developed rocket-propelled camera systems. But it was in 1957, when Sputnik-1 took
the first photograph of the earth from satellite.
• Systematic earth observation from space started with the launch of Explorer-1 in 1959
and meteorological satellite,TIROS-1 in 1960.
• The launch of Earth ResourcesTechnology Satellite (ERTS) in 1972 dawned a new era
in remote sensing.This was the first satellite available for systematic and repetitive
observations of earth’s land resources.
• Landsat-1, 2 and 3 carried multispectral sensors operating in 0.5-1.1µ wavelength
range and had 79m x 57m spatial resolution.The satellite data provided by these
satellites facilitated the identification and mapping of broad forest types and canopy
densities. Landsat-4 and 5 carried both Multispectral scanner (MSS) andThematic
Mapper (TM) sensors and provided low as well as medium resolution (30m x 30m
pixel) imagery.The LandsatTM imagery changed the foresters’ outlook about the
forests.The availability of 20m and 10m resolution imagery from French satellite,
SPOT later significantly advanced remote sensing applications and brought image
interpretation close to virtual reality.
• LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) remote sensing is a breakthrough technology
for forest resources inventory. It offers a great potential for forest conservation and
management.The advantage of using LiDAR is that it provides three-dimensional
data.

12. Forestry Monitoring
Pest and pollution
LandsatTM data was used to assess and monitor damage by comparing the results of near infrared
and short wave infrared waves to differentiate differences in spectral regions.The sensors also
display the changes in canopy biomass, structure, loss of foliage and
changes in canopy moisture.The higher the ratio, the higher the damage that had occurred.
Damage patterns suggest that the factors associated with clouds and weather patterns may
influence forest decline.These identifications can then assist managers in making decisions about
salvage or treatment.
Suitability and Productivity Assessment
Another factor includes efforts to identify biophysical and climatic factors suitable for the
regeneration of tree species.This can be important for establishing tree plantations, for
afforestation programs, for re-establishing endemic species following severe
over-utilization and for timber harvesting.The information obtained from assessing the
potential productivity of a site can be used to manage it for optimal harvest.
Climatic conditions.
Deforestation
There are many uncertainties about actual rates of deforestation, hence the need for accurate, up-
to-date monitoring schemes by comparing the imageries of different periods.

13. GIS and RS technology is important in forest cover mapping:
• Multilayered site representation can be possible by using elevation (ex. slope), hydrology and the
locational information of roads and infrastructure this interpreted data of large areas can useful for
Emergency and Fire mapping.And forest fires are directly affected on plants, animals, vegetation
cover, stream flow, soil, air quality and climate.The loss the life and property also caused by loss of
timber. Forest fires also responsible for wildlife habitat destruction. GIS useful for forest fire
modeling obtaining timely and efficient geospatial information for management of forest fires
• GIS data useful for forest management, because most of the rainforest are depleting in enormous
rate, and it is due to the increasing rate of urbanization and agriculture and this human activities
encroachment in forest areas.
• Deforestation Identification using different RS data i.e. different multispectral imageries with GIS
maps of the urban growth and factor recognition affecting on deforestation. Also Different
temporal satellite image data can provides statistical analysis of forest cover and information about
deforestation usingGIS maps.
• GIS is useful for representation in the form of graphs, maps and other GIS statistical modeling
functionalities aids its value. So it is useful for forest management
• DEM (Digital Elevation Data) of forest cover useful for GIS analysis. And it is useful for various
terrain attributes examination, movement of soil and nutrients influence from it, as well as the
resulting outcome on wildlife productivity, forest, plant distribution.

14. Future Prospects
The need for higher spatial, spectral and radiometric resolutions for forest types and species
(associations) has been emphasized over time. Gradually, the mapping and monitoring scenario is
expected to be a lot better than ever before.The spatial, spectral, and the radiometric resolutions
have already improved considerably. Currently many of the sensors provide spectral resolutions of
the order of about 10 nanometers per band. Sensing using continuous spectra is expected to help
not only in better species identification, association/formation and forest/vegetation type level
mapping but also result in higher accuracy in timber volume and biomass estimations by
highlighting the subtle differences in the physiognomy of the vegetation.The hyperspectral
imagery is providing insight into the state of biodiversity and the vegetation continuum across
ecosystems and the landscapes in an unprecedented manner. Ground penetration radars are
already helping the scientific community in belowground biomass Assessment.

15. Forests are a dynamic resource, affected by many coexisting ecological processes and direct
management interventions. It is clear that throughout the world, forests are subject to many demands.
As a result, many forest management problems have the nature of multi-objective planning procedures.
Stronger tools are necessary for the analytical resolution of conflicting suitability’s and choices in
resource allocation.
A key development in remote sensing has been the increased availability of high-spatial- and high-
spectral-resolution remotely sensed data from a wide range of sensors and platforms. Hyperspectral
imagery promises to provide improved discrimination of forest cover and physiological attributes.
Radar applications are being developed that penetrate the forest canopy to reveal characteristics of the
forest floor. New technologies such as LIDAR can provide estimates of forest biomass, height, and the
vertical distribution of forest structure with unprecedented accuracy.With forest management becoming
increasingly complex, due to greater environmental and social involvement and pressures,GIS is likely to
play an increasingly central role. Developments in greater band width, web based technology and
wireless communication will provide much greater opportunities for information access even in more
remote areas.This will allow real time online data capture and query in the field.
Forests are complex assembly of species that lend themselves well to broad level inventory through
remote sensing.As RS and GIS technologies are widely used, forest resource investigation method is
improved highly. However, the need for strong ground truth remains vital and it is likely that satellite
positioning systems such as GPS will play an important role in augmenting traditional forest survey
activities.
Conclusion